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Your Main Assets in Business

There are many things that make a successful business, any one of which can crash your business if you ignore them.

But not all sources of power in business are created equal.

We’re not going to talk about big business and how to invest 10.000 or 50.000 dollars.

The person I’m writing this article for is your typical start-up entrepreneur who’s tried a lot of different non-classical ways of earning an income and has read quite a few self-help, personal development and financial education books, but is still puzzled as to “OK, BUT HOW DO I GET CUSTOMERS TO ACTIVELY CARE ABOUT MY BUSINESS, SEEK ME OUT, BUY MY PRODUCT AND REMAIN LOYAL?”

I’ll try to focus on a few basic (but not simple) things that factor into whether your start-up business will really get off the ground and hit a stride or if it will remain a daring and hopeful dream with little else to show for it at the end of the day?

So what are the key ingredients in order for Sustainable Wealth generation by your start-up?

Is it the average number of sales in a month / year?

Is it your notoriety and its positive or negative variance?

Is it how viral your Facebook posts or ad campaigns go?

Well sure, those are worth taking into account too, but at the end of the day, the basis of entrepreneurship are pretty easy to miss, which is why most businesses will never really get off the ground.

DEEP SELF-UNDERSTANDING

This is one of the first thing entrepreneurs miss, and for my mind it is BY FAR the most important of any would-be entrepreneur’s assets.

Think of it. You’ve had a corporate or private job for 3-5 years then decided it isn’t for you. “I deserve more”, you said to yourself. “I am meant for more, not just doing desk-work and working boring 9:00 to 17:00 office hours day in and day out”. So you quit, because working 09:00 to 17:00 surely wouldn’t leave enough time for you to do a real start-up business on the side. And even if it did leave the time, working office hours is physically but more than that emotionally and mentally draining and exhausting.

You read some books, went to some seminars and retreats, studied the Law of Attraction, you did some vivid visualizations, took a 1 dollar bill and put an extra six 0’s on its end, posting it on your Vision Board, just so you can physically visualize and feel in your body the feeling of having made your first million dollars.

You’re pumped up, ready to rock, your attitude and mindset are as fit and as ready to go as the latest model of Ferrari. You’re on fire.

First month passes, you set up your site, you spread some word of mouth. A few curious people even buy your product or services. You make a few money, less than your 09:00 to 17:00 job, but it’s “Money made from your dream”, so they taste infinitely sweeter.

But the clients that bought your product in the first month don’t come back the second month, cause your product is likely a non-consumable, so when they buy it, it’s either you up-sell them something, or that’s it, the client is gone and you need a new one next month to replace the one that bought your product today.

2 months, 3 months in, the money and clients are still coming, but by now you’re starting to feel the toll a start-up takes on the entrepreneur. Dreams, however grand they are and however much you’re in love with them do have a shelf life. If results do not come, then disappointment, regret and worry rear their ugly head.

What do you do, you know the value of what you offer. You wonder how your clients can even live without your product or service. For you, what you offer is nothing short of the hottest thing around since sliced bread. Why can’t the clients see eye to eye with you?

Why can’t they just place the same importance and value on your product as you do. In your mind, they would be much better off if they did, I mean you do offer a great product, don’t you?

The Client

The Product

The Sale

That’s what it’s all about for most start-up entrepreneurs who are trying to get their business off the ground and into the air. Eyes on the prize, don’t forget your intention, and everything should be just fine. Or should it?

Is there anything missing from this picture?

Well not according to the law of attraction it’s not.

Strong, intense intent of what it is you want (for yourself and for your customer)? CHECK!

Never-Back-Down attitude toward the Sale and a steel resolve to “open the client’s eyes” to the true value and necessity of your product? You don’t even check this anymore. Here, you’re the SUPREME RULER of “opening the client’s eyes” attitude.

This is what most entrepreneurs do and they will keep doing it because it’s the only thing they really know how to do: try to be convincers, eye-openers, persuaders, marketers. They have the attitude of “It’s up to me to sell the product, to impress the virtues of my product upon my clients. Otherwise why should they care about what I have to offer?”

That’s actually a really good question. WHY? Why should another person (likely a 09:00 to 17:00 worker who doesn’t have a lot of money to spare at the end of the month) dig deep into his or her pockets an exchange some of his money for some of your value?

“Well because it’s useful and will make his or her life better if he uses my product / services”

Yeah, well, so are all the other products and services offered by other entrepreneurs just like you. Why should the client pay attention to YOU and buy from YOU?

This is where most entrepreneurs are at a loss. They’ve read the books, the success stories, the formulas. They know about ad-words, about paid advertising on Facebook, yet they’re nowhere closer to their business reliably getting off the ground. It’s still a mystery to them just what it takes to see your business run without you needing to be there constantly supervising, constantly creating, constantly feeding it your energy.

Why does it work for some and not for others? It’s the same formula for all, it’s the same book for all. But some get the results, and some just get the work, the toil, the exhaustion.

Getting your business off the ground is a mystery to you because YOU’RE A MYSTERY TO YOURSELF, and not necessarily the kind of mystery you fall in love with.

Personal DEVELOPMENT is pretty worthless without personal understanding.

What are you developing anyway? What precisely is the Person that you’re developing made of?

Most settle for “knowing themselves”, and that’s a first step, but only the first. There is a whole journey beyond the first step, and actually, for anyone who’s walked the path, they know Business, Money-Making, Desires and Intentions are just excuses for a person to know itself and stretch itself through experience.

BUSINESS IS A BRILLIANT TEACHER. It’s a school of hard truths that will take your dreams and grind them to dust that will later be used to bake the bread of deep self-understanding.

Our surface self, our outer layer may be visible, so one can get the impression that he or she “knows himself”. But there’s so much more beneath the surface. And this is what business is here to reveal to us: what’s beneath the surface. Not merely to get to know what’s beneath the surface, but to actually chew on it, digest it, integrate it and understand it.

Business is a harsh mentor but an effective one. And it’s not about “Our Client our Master”. It’s not about the product, or the sale, or making money. It’s about having the courage to put yourself out there and the flexibility to reinvent yourself, see what doesn’t work and seek endlessly a smoother way to serve.

In the beginning we think it’s about materializing the intention, making X number of sales, getting X number of people to share our article, whatever the measuring stick is.

It never was about that.

Business is about saying to yourself “I’m ready to go to the school of hard knocks, and I’m not too proud to learn from every single person that crosses my path”.

Making money, if it happens, is just a by-product of letting go of pre-conceptions of what works and what doesn’t, of what can be done and what can’t.

A proud or entitled ego filled with expectations will be a detriment, for it will stop one from learning and being flexible. And in the world of business you either adapt or you die and either go to the safe 09:00 to 17:00 job or start over.

But it never was about sweeping the client off their feet with how great and necessary your product is. It was never about getting the sale. It was always about having an arena that will constantly challenge you to adapt, and through that constant challenge and constant adaptation to a changing landscape, maybe by a gift of Grace, an understanding of your Deep Self will emerge.

Some people are mediocre at business. Some are pretty good. But some are something else. They’re beyond good. They’re beyond any classification. They may not make millions, but you can see it in the way they make money that they’re prosperous. Those are the Legends, the Masters, the ones who through a huge amount of trial and error have come to not just know, but understand themselves.

And in understanding your deep self, one understands the deep self of one’s client. And then they can sell in quite a different way.

Of course, there’s also Fractal Marketing, which I won;t go into right now cause it’s not the time or place for it. Maybe some other time. But suffice to say that not everyone is on your fractal and you can’t really sell to persons who are outside your fractal. That doesn’t mean you can’t make a sale, but it doesn’t go smoothly. The Client buys, but it’s not really the client for you.

By and large, entrepreneurs don’t really care who the one that’s buying their product is. As long as they’re buying the product, that is a good product that helps people no matter who they are, a typical entrepreneur is happy.

But if you’re reading this, you’re not your typical run-of-the-mill entrepreneur. You probably want something more for yourselves and for your clients. It does matter who’s buying. Sure, you could make the sale. Sure, you could impress on your client the idea that he needs what you have to offer and it will really help him. But what if they really need to figure themselves out on their own? What if they don’t really need your product, but they don’t know any better so they buy it anyways?

Without a deep understanding, anyone is a potential client, there;s no selectivity. There’s no funnel to churn out the ones not suited for your offer. Rather, the scope of the sales funnel if there is any is to get as many people as possible to see your product and decide to buy it because it’s good for them.

It’s easy to overlook deep self understanding as a keystone of a successful business and to think that business and money making is the goal, not the tool. Upon closer inspection it’s the other way around. The Flow of Money and the trials to make them are just pointers toward deeper self-understanding.

It’s not just how much money you make and how many people “benefit” from your product. It’s how you make that money as well. Money carry with them the energy of how you made them. If you’re sensitive you can get a feel for the energy they carry.

A few money made in a way that is consistent with your fractal and your true self is much more valuable than a ton of money made by simply “selling your ultra super product to a lot of people”.

But entrepreneurs are usually after the money, and measure themselves by “And how much money does your business make?” instead of by “And what secrets about yourself has your business life revealed?”

2. FRIENDS

And then there’s friends. While we can only have a few close friends, we can certainly make a friend out of anyone who we do business with. People don’t need our help, or our products. I know this is hard for an entrepreneur to hear. They need an AUTHENTIC CONNECTION to the man or the crew behind the products they buy.

If people need connection, but don’t need my product, then why should they buy my product? Would they not serve their need better by going to someone on the street and having an authentic connection for free?

See, it’s not that simple. They may not need your product, but the product is the container of the connection they seek. The meaning and connection people seek needs a form. And products, whether physical or services provide that form and the excuse for delivering the payload.

We’re not ice-cream factories or clothing stores. We don’t deal in tangible industrial goods. The entrepreneurial business is about something else. It’s about providing what industry cannot. It’s not about usefulness, but about AUTHENTICITY, about MEANING.

And while we keep the product, we realize it never was about the product, but about 2 people meeting each other and for a brief moment uniting in the act of exchange. We do not exchange products or services vs money (although many entrepreneurs do precisely that on as big a scale as they can), we exchange an authenticity for another authenticity. In the exchange 2 essences meet, shake hands, rub off on one another, then move on.

You may never meet the same client again, or you may. But if at least your eyes are open to what is really happening in the act of exchange, then it is possible that your client’s eyes will also open. You are exchanging gifts with a friend, even if they don’t know it and maybe never will.

Doesn’t matter, as long as you know it.

And of course, there are the friends who help you or consult you in your business, and also other friends with businesses of their own. As voyagers on the same journey of deep self-understanding (or deep-self understanding, whichever way you want it) you can just gather around a common fire and exchange tales.

Prosperity, true harmonic prosperity is really about gathering together and being among friends, whether they are your colleagues, your fellow entrepreneurs, or your clients. Cause the bread tastes better and the whine is sweeter when it is shared among friends.

Welcome to FRIENDS IN BUSINESS LOUNGE.

May you relax into your own essence and shake hands with your deep self!